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DEFEND THE RUTGERS THREE!
SIGN PETITION:
http://www.petitiononline.com/DefRU3/petition.html
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SAVE RENT CONTROL! NO ON PROP. 98!
http://leftinsf.com/blog/index.php/archives/2492
We All Hate that 98!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Phrt5zVGn0
[The catch is, that while it's true that the landlord can increase rents to whatever he or she wants once a property becomes vacant, the current rent-control law now ensures that the new tenants are still under rent-control for their, albeit higher, rent. Under the new law, there simply will be no rent control when the new tenant moves in so their much higher rent-rate can increase as much as the landlord chooses each year from then on!!! So, no more rent-control at all!!! Tricky, huh?...BW]
Prop 98, a statewide measure on the June 3 ballot will end rent control and just cause eviction protections for renters. San Francisco will see massive displacement and the city will change forever if 98 passes.
READ ALL OF PROP. 98 at: http://yesprop98.com/read/?_adctlid=v%7Cwynx8c5jjesxsb%7Cwziq39twoqov52
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Stop fumigation of citizens without their consent in California
Target: Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, Senator Joe Simitian, Assemblymember Loni Hancock, Assemblymember John Laird, Senator Abel Maldonado
Sponsored by: John Russo
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/stop-fumigation-of-citizens-without-their-consent-in-california
Additional information is available at http://www.stopthespray.org
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Rock for Justice-Rock for Palestine
FREE outdoor festival
May 10th, 2008
Civic Center, San Francisco
Please make your tax-deductible donation, payable to 'Palestine Right to Return Coalition' or 'PRRC/Palestine Solidarity Concert'
Mail to:
Local Nakba Committee (LNC)
PO Box #668
2425 Channing Way
Berkeley, CA 94704
For more information about, the Palestine Right of Return Coalition, see: www.al-awda.org.
For regular concert updates see our website at: http://www.araborganizing.org/concert.html
You can donate online at the Facebook Cause 'Nakba-60, Palestine Solidarity Concert' at: http://apps.facebook.com/causes/causes/19958?h=plw&recruiter_id=6060344
List of confirmed artists:
Dam, featuring Abeer, aka 'Sabreena da Witch'–Palestinian Hip-Hop crew from Lid (1948, Palestine).
Dead Prez
Fred Wreck–DJ/Producer, for artists Snoop Dogg, Hilary Duff,
Brittany Spears and other celebs.
Ras Ceylon –Sri Lankan Revolution Hip Hop
Arab Summit:
Narcicyst - with Iraqi-Canadian Hip Hop group Euphrates
Excentrik- Palestinian Producer/Composer/MC
Omar Offendun- with Syrian/Sudani Hip Hop group The N.o.m.a.d.s
Ragtop- with Palestinian/Filipino group The Philistines
Scribe Project – Palestinian/Mexican Hip Hop/Soul Band
Additional artists still pending confirmation.
Points of Unity for Concert Sponsorship
An end to all US political, military and economic aid to Israel.
The divestment of all public and private entities from all Israeli corporations and American corporations with subsidiaries operating within Israel.
An end to the investment of Labor Union members' pension funds in Israel.
The boycott of all Israeli products.
The right to return for all Palestinian refugees to their original towns, villages and lands with compensation for damages inflicted on their property and lives.
The right for all Palestinian refugees to full restitution of all confiscated and destroyed property.
The formation of an independent, democratic state for its citizens in all of Palestine.
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National Assembly to End the Iraq War and Occupation
natassembly.org
Dear Antiwar Activists,
You are invited to attend a special Bay Area meeting of antiwar activists who support or want to learn more about the National Assembly to End the Iraq War and Occupation. The meeting is set for:
Saturday, May 17, 2:00 P.M.
ILWU Local 6 Hall
255 Ninth Street, near Howard, San Francisco
The National Assembly to End the Iraq War and Occupation (website: natassembly.org) is planning an open national antiwar conference in Cleveland, Ohio on June 28-29 at the Crown Plaza Hotel.
To date almost 450 local, state and national organizations and prominent individuals have endorsed this first open antiwar conference. The complete list is on the website as well as the conference statement of purpose, schedule, workshops and all the rest.
Conference endorsers include the Cleveland AFL-CIO, the San Francisco and Los Angeles teachers unions, the Progressive Democrats of America, Veterans for Peace, Cindy Sheehan, Howard Zinn, Jonathan Hutto, U.S. Labor Against the War, National Lawyers Guild, Los Angeles Country Federation of Labor/AFL-CIO, The Iraq Moratorium, Green Party of Ohio, Mumia Abu-Jamal, New England United Against the War, Peace and Freedom Party, Peninsula Peace and Justice Center, Greater Boston Stop the War Coalition, Ohio State Council/Here/Unite, Northeast Ohio American Friends Service Committee, Thomas Merton Center/Pittsburgh, the ANSWER Coalition, Middle East Children's Alliance, San Jose Peace and Justice Center, National Education Peace and Justice Caucus, Connecticut United for Peace, Labor Council for Latin American Advancement/Sacramento and hundreds of others.
The purpose of the Bay Area meeting is to promote support for and attendance at the Cleveland conference, to update the progress toward a united antiwar movement, and to seek new endorsers for the conference.
The National Assembly was formed as a network aimed at fostering a united, mass action-oriented, independent and democratic antiwar movement to Bring the Troops Home Now.
Speakers at the Cleveland conference include national leaders of the major antiwar coalitions, UFPJ (Leslie Cagan), ANSWER (Brian Becker), Jeremy Scahill, Navy Petty Officer Jonathan Hutto, Donna DeWitt, Pres., South Carolina, AFO-CIO, Cindy Sheehan (via satellite hookup) as well as leaders of several of the nation's most prominent antiwar and social justice groups.
The National Assembly was formed as an effort to achieve unity in action among the broad forces in the antiwar movement in order to close the gap between the mass antiwar sentiment and the still modest numbers that actively participate in the movement's activities.
As the Statement of Purpose states:
"We therefore invite everyone, every organization, every coalition, everywhere in the U.S. - all who oppose the war and occupation - to attend an open democratic U.S. national antiwar conference and join with us in advancing and promoting the coming together of an antiwar movement in this country with the power to make a mighty contribution toward ending the war and occupation of Iraq now.
"Everyone is welcome. The objective is to place on the agenda of the entire U.S. antiwar movement a proposal for the largest possible united mass mobilization(s) in the future to stop the war and end the occupation."
The San Francisco meeting is initiated by representatives of the Bay Area groups that participate on the 40-person Coordinating Committee of the National Assembly.
These include:
Paul George, Director, Peninsula Peace and Justice Center
Patty Mote, National Network on Cuba
Tom Lacey, Peace and Freedom Party
Alan Benjamin, Executive Board, San Francisco Labor Council
Jeff Mackler, founder, Mobilization for Peace, Jobs and Justice
Todd Chretien, International Socialist Organization
Bill Leumer, Workers International League
Millie Phillips, Socialist Organizer
Join us in Cleveland on June 28-29 for the conference.
Crown Plaza Hotel
Sponsored by the National Assembly to End the Iraq War and Occupation
P.O. Box 21008; Cleveland, OH 44121; Voice Mail: 216-736-4704; Email: NatAssembly@aol.com
The Call for National Assembly:
http://natassembly.org/thecall/
List of Endorsers:
http://natassembly.org/thecall/
Endorse the conference:
http://natassembly.org/endorse/
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For Immediate Release
UPDATE: SIXTH AL-AWDA CONVENTION TO MARK 60 YEARS OF PALESTINIAN NAKBA
Embassy Suites Hotel Anaheim South, 11767 Harbor Boulevard,
Garden Grove, California, 92840
May 16-18, 2008
The 6th Annual International Al-Awda Convention will mark a devastating event in the long history of the Palestinian people. We call it our Nakba.
Confirmed speakers include Bishop Atallah Hanna, Supreme Justice Dr. Sheikh Taiseer Al Tamimi, Dr. Adel Samara, Dr. Salman Abu Sitta, Dr. Ghada Karmi, Dr. As'ad Abu Khalil, Dr. Saree Makdisi, and Ramzy Baroud. Former Prime Minister of Lebanon Salim El Hos and Palestinian Legislative Council member Khalida Jarrar have also been invited.
Al-Awda, The Palestine Right to Return Coalition
PO Box 131352
Carlsbad, CA 92013, USA
Tel: 760-685-3243
Fax: 360-933-3568
E-mail: info@al-awda. org
WWW: http://al-awda. org
Al-Awda, The Palestine Right to Return Coalition (PRRC) is the largest network of grassroots activists and students dedicated to Palestinian human rights. We are a not for profit tax-exempt educational and charitable 501(c)(3) organization as defined by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) of the United States of America. Under IRS guidelines, your donations to PRRC are tax-deductible.
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Help Save Troy Davis
Troy Davis came within 24 hours of execution in July, 2007 before receiving a temporary stay of execution. Two weeks later the Georgia Supreme Court agreed to hear his extraordinary motion for a new trial. On Monday, March 17, 2008 the court denied Mr. Davis’ appeal. Troy Davis was sentenced to death for the murder of Police Officer Mark MacPhail in Georgia. The case against him consisted entirely of witness testimony which contained inconsistencies even during the trial. Since then, all but two of the state's nine non-police witnesses from the trial have recanted or contradicted their testimony. Many of these witnesses have stated in sworn affidavits that they were pressured or coerced by police into testifying or signing statements against Troy Davis.
The message:
"I welcomed your decision to stay the execution of Troy Anthony Davis in July 2007, and thank you for taking the time to consider evidence of his innocence. When you issued this decision, you stated that the board "will not allow an execution to proceed in this State unless and until its members are convinced that there is no doubt as to the guilt of the accused." Because the Georgia Supreme Court denied Troy Davis a hearing, doubts of his guilt will always remain. I appeal to you to be true to your words and commute the death sentence of Troy Davis.
"This case has generated widespread attention, which reflects serious concerns in Georgia and throughout the United States about the potential for executing an innocent man. The power of clemency exists as a safety net to prevent such an irreversible error. As you know, Mr. Davis has been on death row in Georgia for more than 15 years for the murder of a police officer he maintains that he did not commit. Davis' conviction was not based on any physical evidence, and the murder weapon was never found.
"Despite mounting evidence that Davis may in fact be innocent of the crime, appeals to courts to consider this evidence have been repeatedly denied for procedural reasons. Instead, the prosecution based its case on the testimony of purported "witnesses," many of whom allege police coercion, and most of whom have since recanted their testimony. One witness signed a police statement declaring that Davis was the assailant then later said "I did not read it because I cannot read." In another case a witness stated that the police "were telling me that I was an accessory to murder and that I would…go to jail for a long time and I would be lucky if I ever got out, especially because a police officer got killed…I was only sixteen and was so scared of going to jail." There are also several witnesses who have implicated another man in the crime but the police focused their efforts on convicting Troy.
"It is deeply troubling to me that Georgia might proceed with this execution given the strong claims of innocence in this case. It has been repeatedly demonstrated that our criminal justice system is not devoid of error and we now know that 127 individuals have been released from death rows across the United States due to wrongful conviction. We must confront the unalterable fact that the system of capital punishment is fallible, given that it is administered by fallible human beings. I respectfully urge the Board of Pardons and Paroles to demonstrate your strong commitment to fairness and justice and commute the death sentence of Troy Anthony Davis.
Thank you for your kind consideration."
Messages will be sent to:
Georgia State Board of Pardons and Paroles
2 Martin Luther King, Jr. Drive, SE
Suite 458, Balcony Level, East Tower
Atlanta, Georgia 30334-4909
Telephone: (404) 657-9350
Fax: (404) 651-8502
Clemency_Information@pap.state.ga.us
Please take a moment to help Troy Davis. On Monday, March 17, 2008, the Georgia Supreme Court decided 4-3 to deny a new trial for Troy Anthony Davis, despite significant concerns regarding his innocence. The stunning decision by the Georgia Supreme Court to let Mr. Davis' death sentence stand means that the state of Georgia might soon execute a man who well may be innocent.
http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/1265/t/5820/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=23774
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"ANGOLA 3"
For 35 years, Jim Crow justice in Louisiana has kept Herman Wallace
and Albert Woodfox locked in solitary confinement for a crime
everyone knows they didn't commit.
Despite overwhelming evidence of their innocence, the "Angola 3",
spend 23 hours each day in a 6x9 cell on the site of a former
plantation. Prison officials - and the state officials who could
intervene - won't end the terrible sentence. They've locked them up
and thrown away the key because they challenged a system that deals an
uneven hand based on the color of one's skin and tortures those who
assert their humanity.
We can help turn things around by making it a political liability for
the authorities at Angola to continue the racist status quo, and by
forcing federal and state authorities to intervene. I've signed on
with ColorOfChange.org to demand an investigation into this clear case
of unequal justice. Will you join us?
http://www.colorofchange.org/angola3/?id=1798-532528
When ColorOfChange.org spoke up about the Jena 6, it was about more
than helping six Black youth in a small town called Jena. It was about
standing up against a system of unequal justice that deals an uneven
hand based on the color of one's skin. That broken system is at work
again and ColorOfChange.org is joining The Innocence Project and
Amnesty International to challenge it in the case of the Angola 3.
"Angola", sits on 18,000 acres of former plantation land in Louisiana
and is estimated to be one of the largest prisons in the United
States. Angola's history is telling: once considered one of the most
violent, racially segregated prison in America, almost a prisoner a
day was stabbed, shot or raped. Prisoners were often put in inhumane
extreme punishment camps for small infractions. The Angola 3 -
Herman, Albert and Robert - organized hunger and work strikes within
the prison in the 70's to protest continued segregation, corruption
and horrific abuse facing the largely Black prisoner population.
Shortly after they spoke out, the Angola 3 were convicted of murdering
a prison guard by an all-white jury. It is now clear that these men
were framed to silence their peaceful revolt against inhumane
treatment. Since then, they have spent every day for 35 years in 6x9
foot cells for a crime they didn't commit.
Herman and Albert are not saints. They are the first to admit they've
committed crimes. But, everyone agrees that their debts to society
for various robbery convictions were paid long ago.
NBC News/Dateline just aired a piece this week about the plight of the
Angola 3. And it's time to finally get some justice for Herman and
Albert. For far too long, court officials have stalled and refused to
review their cases. Evidence of prosecutorial misconduct and
constitutional violations have not swayed them.
It's now time for the Governor of Louisiana and the United States
Congress, which provides the funding for federal prisons like Angola,
to step in and say enough is enough. Please join us in calling for
Governor Bobby Jindal and your Congressperson to initiate an immediate
and full investigation into the case of the Angola 3.
http://www.colorofchange.org/angola3/?id=1798-532528
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DEFEND FREE SPEECH RIGHTS ON THE NATIONAL MALL!
~ Please circulate this urgent update widely ~
The ANSWER Coalition is vigorously supporting the campaign launched by the Partnership for Civil Justice to defend free speech rights on the National Mall. We thank all the ANSWER Coalition supporters who have joined this campaign and we urge everyone to do so. What follows is an urgent message from the Partnership for Civil Justice about the campaign.
1) The Partnership for Civil Justice has set up an easy-to-use mechanism that will allow you to send a message directly to the National Park Service about their National Mall Plan. Click this link to send your message.
http://www.pephost.org/site/R?i=8_RVxCikVreKjAjXZlb49Q..
2) Sign the Statement in Defense of Free Speech Rights on the National Mall.
http://www.pephost.org/site/R?i=PKScBmTUgEZOZ_cxmhZbAg..
3) If you have already signed this statement, click this link right now to let us know if we can publicize you as a signer of this important statement.
http://www.pephost.org/site/R?i=6kKl3z44MGnkeYbNr_pA_w..
4) If you are unsure whether you have already signed, you can sign the statement again, and all duplicate names will be eliminated.
http://www.pephost.org/site/R?i=XoId_W834FDPRKYz6DjgfA..
Sincerely,
Mara Verheyden-Hillard and Carl Messineo, co-founders of Partnership
for Civil Justice
Background on the NPS initiative to restrict protesting on the National Mall
http://www.pephost.org/site/R?i=wuIJnWmxqhcuEOXlEiwung..
Washington Post article: The Battle to Remold the Mall
http://www.pephost.org/site/R?i=EWmH5pSb477zqvLc8c8WDw..
Alternet article: National Mall Redesign Could Seriously Restrict Free Speech
http://www.pephost.org/site/R?i=jdbtCB0LDdDpdEAvIgwtqg..
A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition
www.answercoalition.org
info@internationalanswer.org
National Office in Washington DC: 202-544-3389
New York City: 212-694-8720
Los Angeles: 323-464-1636
San Francisco: 415-821-6545
Chicago: 773-463-0311
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NBA? NFL?
Can you guess which organization this is?
36 have been accused of spousal abuse
7 have been arrested for fraud
19 have been accused of writing bad checks
117 have directly or indirectly bankrupted at least 2 businesses
3 have done time for assault
71, repeat 71 cannot get a credit card due to bad credit
14 have been arrested on drug-related charges
8 have been arrested for shoplifting
21 currently are defendants in lawsuits, and
84 have been arrested for drunk driving in the last year
Give up yet? . . Scroll down,
Neither, it's the 435 members of the United States Congress
The same group of Idiots that crank out hundreds of new laws each year designed to keep the rest of us in line.
Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful. Psalm 1:1
Director of Pastors Against Injustice
Pastor Wayne M. Jones I
To report a complaint of police misconduct: https://www.eomniform.com/servlet/FillForm/dkamau/free
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ARTICLES IN FULL:
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1) Dockers shut West Coast ports in brief protest
George Raine, Chronicle Staff Writer
Friday, May 2, 2008
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/05/02/BUTM10FDD1.DTL
2) Thousands rally in May Day effort for immigration reform
By SOPHIA TAREEN, Associated Press Writer
Thursday, May 1, 2008
(05-01) 21:43 PDT CHICAGO, (AP) --
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2008/04/29/national/a122602D18.DTL&hw=immigrant+rights+may+day&sn=001&sc=1000
3) On May Day, many marchers for many causes
Tyche Hendricks, Carolyn Jones,Charles Burress, Chronicle Staff Writers
Friday, May 2, 2008
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/05/02/BA4K10F7K3.DTL&hw=immigrant+rights+may+day&sn=002&sc=680
4) Western ports return to normal after workers' war protest
By ALEX VEIGA, AP Business Writer
Friday, May 2, 2008
(05-02) 04:02 PDT LOS ANGELES, (AP) --
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2008/04/30/financial/f155200D55.DTL
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2008/04/30/financial/f155200D55.DTL&hw=immigrant+rights+may+day&sn=004&sc=553
5) Notes From the War on Terror
Editorial
May 2, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/02/opinion/02fri1.html?hp
6) Crowds Are Smaller at Protests by Immigrants
By RANDAL C. ARCHIBOLD
May 2, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/02/us/02march.html?ref=us
7) Union’s War Protest Shuts West Coast Ports
By WILLIAM YARDLEY
May 2, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/02/us/02port.html?ref=us
8) Oakland Teach-In Looks at Budget Cuts and the War
By JESSE McKINLEY
May 2, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/02/us/02oakland.html?ref=us
9) Cameraman Is Released From Guantánamo
By WILLIAM GLABERSON
May 2, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/02/us/nationalspecial3/02gitmo.html?ref=us
10) State Officials Predict a Deep Recession
By NICHOLAS CONFESSORE
May 2, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/02/nyregion/02albany.html?ref=nyregion
11) Chevron Earnings Up 10% on Record Oil Prices
By REUTERS
May 2, 2008
Filed at 8:52 a.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/business/international-chevron-results.html?ref=business
12) After Hiatus, States Set Wave of Executions
By RALPH BLUMENTHAL
May 3, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/03/us/03execute.html?ref=us
13) Convention Preparations Prompt Suit by A.C.L.U.
By KIRK JOHNSON
May 3, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/03/us/03denver.html?ref=us
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1) Dockers shut West Coast ports in brief protest
George Raine, Chronicle Staff Writer
Friday, May 2, 2008
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/05/02/BUTM10FDD1.DTL
Dockworkers from Long Beach to Seattle defied their employers and an arbitrator's ruling and brought cargo operations to a standstill for eight hours Thursday in protest of the war in Iraq.
At least 6,000 workers represented by San Francisco's International Longshore and Warehouse Union did not report for work for the day shift, effectively shutting down 29 West Coast ports. Their president, Bob McEllrath, issued a statement that read, "We're supporting the troops and telling politicians in Washington that it's time to end the war in Iraq."
A day earlier, an independent arbitrator sided with waterfront terminal operators and other employers who suspected a job action was in the works, and ruled that halting work would be a contract violation.
The ILWU was not dissuaded.
"It's important that these processes are in place and we respect them," ILWU spokesman Craig Merrilees said of the ruling by arbitrator John Kagel. "We also have an obligation and are proud to respect the First Amendment rights our members have as citizens governed by the Constitution. This is a voluntary act of good citizenship to shake the tree in Washington, D.C., and get those folks to wake up and respect the overwhelming majority of Americans," who want to end the war, Merrilees said.
Thousand of people in goods distribution, including truckers and distribution center employees, were affected by the one-shift work stoppage, but it came on a relatively light day at the docks and it appeared that logistics planners worked around the action, which was long advertised. The evening shift Thursday began without interruption.
The ILWU's Longshore Caucus, the highest decision-making body of the union, overwhelmingly approved a resolution in February to request employers grant the union a "stop-work meeting" on May 1. The ILWU contract states that the union can use one shift per month to stop work and have a meeting to discuss union issues, and employers routinely grant those requests - but only for an evening shift, when there is less cargo to move.
The union wanted time off on the day shift, but the employers said it would be disruptive. On April 8, the union withdrew the daytime request but proceeded with the original plan for a stop-work meeting. According to evidence Kagel gathered, workers made it known that they would not be working on Thursday at several ports, including Tacoma, Seattle, Oakland, Los Angeles and Long Beach.
The action takes on another layer of significance because the ILWU and the Pacific Maritime Association, which represents terminal operators, shipping companies and other employers, are involved in contract negotiations.
"It's of more concern to us because it signals something that is more sinister," said Steve Getzug, a spokesman for the Pacific Maritime Association, suggesting the union may employ slowdown or other disruptive tactics if the current contract expires July 1 without a new accord in place.
"The ILWU indicated to us months ago it was committed to good-faith negotiations and said the union was hopeful we could reach conclusion without disruption. We believe today's coordinated work action flies in the face of that," Getzug said.
Merrilees, of the ILWU, said companies "have known about this for more than a month, and most made plans to adjust accordingly. The impact was negligible, and even with the companies huffing and puffing, there will be very little impact when all is said and done."
The West Coast ports, and in particular the major facilities at Los Angeles, Long Beach and Oakland, on an average day move 10,000 cargo containers, loading and unloading ships. The workload is greater in the second half of the year, so Thursday's demand, said the PMA's Getzug, was probably similar to that of Thursday the week before, when 6,000 longshore workers were dispatched to handle cargo for 30 vessels at the major West Coast ports for the day.
Fifteen cargo ships arrived at the adjacent Ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles on Thursday and were unattended by the ILWU during the day, said Arley Baker, a spokesman at the Port of Los Angeles. By late afternoon, there were 12 ships at Los Angeles, he said.
During the busier time of the year, with holiday-related cargo arriving from the Far East, there would be 2o or more ships arriving at those two ports alone, Baker said. "The sky is not falling, and ships are not backed up from here to China," he said.
While three to five ships typically are docked at the Port of Oakland on any given day, only one was due to arrive Thursday during the work stoppage, said port spokeswoman Marilyn Sandifur.
"There was awareness by terminal operators of a possible labor action," and shipping companies acted accordingly to minimize disruption, Sandifur said.
"If I'm a logistics expert with a major retailer, I'm going to work around it," Baker said of the labor dispute.
Indeed, Merrilees said, "We hear ships reduced speed out in the Pacific, to adjust to the schedule on May 1, and we are pleased by the added benefit of reduced air pollution."
Nevertheless, the work stoppage recalled the disastrous effects of the 10-day lockout of workers by the PMA in 2002, during fruitless contract talks. The dispute damaged both sides and ended when President Bush obtained an order to open the ports under the Taft-Hartley Act. Estimates of daily losses in the economy exceeded $1 billion at the time, as produce rotted on docks, wheat never got out of Montana silos to be exported, and holiday toys were delayed on their trip to market.
Getzug, the Pacific Maritime Association spokesman, said its president, Jim McKenna, was unavailable Thursday as he is focused on contract negotiations.
Annual business activity related to the West Coast ports is about $1.2 trillion, 10 percent of total U.S. gross domestic product, according to John Martin and Associates, a company that does economic impact analysis. The company said shippers pay $50,000 to $100,000 a day to have a ship sitting at a berth for an extra day, and the costs eventually reach consumers.
E-mail George Raine at graine@sfchronicle.com.
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2) Thousands rally in May Day effort for immigration reform
By SOPHIA TAREEN, Associated Press Writer
Thursday, May 1, 2008
(05-01) 21:43 PDT CHICAGO, (AP) --
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2008/04/29/national/a122602D18.DTL&hw=immigrant+rights+may+day&sn=001&sc=1000
Thousands of chanting, flag-waving activists rallied in cities across the country Thursday, attempting to reinvigorate calls for immigration reform in a presidential election year in which the economy has taken center stage.
From Washington to Miami to Los Angeles, activists demanded citizenship opportunities for the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants in the U.S. and an end to raids and deportations.
"We come here to fight for legalization. We're people. We have rights," said Eric Molina, an undocumented factory worker who immigrated to Zion, Ill., from Mexico.
Molina, his sister and his 13-year-old daughter Erika, a U.S. citizen, were among about 15,000 people who rallied in Chicago in one of the largest demonstrations of the day.
Turnout has fallen sharply since the first nationwide rallies in 2006, when more than 1 million people — at least 400,000 in Chicago alone — clogged streets and brought downtown traffic to a standstill. Activists say this year's efforts are focused less on protests and more on voter registration and setting an agenda for the next president.
Some said participation likely was lower because many immigrants increasingly fear deportation.
Margot Veranes, a volunteer organizer in Tucson, Ariz., — where 12,000 took to the streets last year but early estimates Thursday put the crowd at about 500 — blamed the turnout on aggressive enforcement by Border Patrol and police.
"People have been stopped and deported in the last week. This is a community living in fear," said Veranes, a researcher for the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades. "You never know when you're going to be stopped by Border Patrol and now the police."
But she said that's also why people were marching.
"We're marching to end the raids and the deportations, but we're also marching for health care and education and good jobs," she said.
Steamy downtown Houston saw between 300 and 400 marchers, including Victor Ibarra, 38, who said he entered the U.S. illegally from Mexico 15 years ago and remains undocumented although he's tried to attain legal status for the past seven years.
"I'm here because we need immigration reform immediately," Ibarra said, wearing handcuffs and chains. "We need to be able to travel and be free."
In Washington, immigrant rights groups and social justice organizations were demanding that Prince William County, in northern Virginia, rescind its anti-illegal immigration measure. They also called for an end to raids and deportations and for establishment of worker centers in Washington, Maryland and Virginia.
Activists also asked the Republican and Democratic national committees to have their presidential candidates enact immigration reform.
A crowd of about 1,000 gathered on the steps of the Oregon Capitol in Salem to call for changes in immigration and workplace laws within the first 100 days of the next congressional session. Many demanded that Oregon reverse a decision, imposed by the Legislature in February, to require proof of legal residence to get a driver's license.
Hugo Orozzo, a 17-year-old high school senior, was among hundreds who marched through the streets of southwest Detroit. He was born in the U.S., but his father was born in Mexico and some other family members are originally from Mexico.
"It is going to help my family and friends," Orozzo said of the effort. He carried a preprinted sign that read: "Stop raids and deportations that separate families!" in both English and Spanish.
In Miami, 75 people marched to the regional immigration offices from the Little Haiti neighborhood. Among them was Elvira Carbajal, who came from Mexico more than a decade ago and is a U.S. citizen but said many of her family members are not.
"They are going to grow up with this anger of the government for the loss of their parents, parents who were simply trying to give them a better life," she said.
In San Francisco, protesters Marta Acuchi and her husband Jose, from Michoacan, Mexico, closed their child daycare center to march with about 400 others.
"We need to fix the legal situation of immigrants," she said. "Even if it's not this year legislators are seeing we're still here, we're still marching, we're still knocking on their door."
And in Milwaukee, factory worker Miguel Tesillos, 29, was among hundreds who lined sidewalks waiting for the march to begin.
"Our people, we pay taxes, we pay the same as a citizen," said Tesillos, who has a Green Card. "Maybe the new president can see this point, and do something for us."
But activists say they know it will be a challenge to push their issues to the political forefront.
Immigration reform did not resonate with voters in primary elections who overwhelmingly listed the economy as their top concern. Immigration legislation has stalled and been defeated in the Senate, and presidential candidates have not extensively addressed the issues.
Democratic presidential rivals Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton supported a 2006 bill, sponsored by Republican candidate John McCain, that offered illegal immigrants legal status on conditions such as learning English. All three also have supported a border fence.
In Chicago, 17-year-old Celeste Rodarte marched with a group of her friends from the city's West Side. She said her parents came to the United States more than 20 years ago and became citizens last year.
"I know a lot of people who don't have papers and I want to help them out," Rodarte said.
Seventh-grader Vicente Campos of Milwaukee was granted an excused absence from school to attend the march. He said he was concerned by stories of immigration officials separating parents and children.
"Immigrants come here to support their families in Mexico," said Campos, 13. "They're not all here to do crimes."
Associated Press Writers Caryn Rousseau in Chicago, David Runk in Detroit, Dinesh Ramde in Milwaukee, Arthur H. Rotstein in Tucson, Ariz., Joseph B. Frazier in Salem, Ore., Mike Graczyk in Houston, Laura Wides-Munoz in Miami, Juliana Barbassa in San Francisco and Jacquelyn Martin in Washington D.C. contributed to this report.
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3) On May Day, many marchers for many causes
Tyche Hendricks, Carolyn Jones,Charles Burress, Chronicle Staff Writers
Friday, May 2, 2008
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/05/02/BA4K10F7K3.DTL&hw=immigrant+rights+may+day&sn=002&sc=680
(05-01) 17:42 PDT SAN FRANCISCO - -- The Bay Area celebrated May Day in traditional fashion Thursday - with an array of protests around the region: for an end to the war in Iraq, against education budget cuts and in favor of legalization for undocumented immigrants.
Dockworkers with the International Longshore and Warehouse Union walked off the job at ports up and down the West Coast, including Oakland and San Francisco, calling for an end to the war. Union officials estimated the number of workers at 25,000 while maritime officials placed the number closer to 10,000.
Anti-war protesters, joining dockworkers and other labor leaders, marched down the Embarcadero from Fisherman's Wharf to Justin Herman Plaza, where a rally drew several hundred protesters and onlookers.
Students at San Francisco State University, UC Berkeley and other college campuses staged walkouts and teach-ins over the state's proposed cuts to education spending.
By late afternoon, the attention shifted toward immigrant rights - with thousands of marchers taking to the streets in San Francisco and Oakland.
Protesters said they want laws making it easier to work, obtain driver's licenses and keep families united, without constant fear of deportation.
This year's marches - in major cities across the United States - did not rival the huge immigrant rights marches during the spring of 2006, in which several million protesters took to the streets across the country.
But immigrant rights advocates are continuing the drumbeat, urging Congress to pass a comprehensive immigration overhaul that would provide a path to legal status, and ultimately citizenship, for the estimated 12 million undocumented immigrants living and working in the United States.
Groups that favor more restrictive immigration policies denounced Thursday's marches.
"The U.S. should use Mexico's legal immigration policy as a model, which would bar burdensome immigrants and would not allow the chain migration of extended families, so that we can first improve life for those who are already here legally, U.S. and foreign-born," said Yeh Ling Ling, director of the Oakland-based Diversity Alliance for a Sustainable America.
The day of protests began at about dawn at the Port of Oakland, where dozens of anti-war protesters rallied outside the port's rail terminal. They waved signs and urged truckers and other port workers to join the longshore workers in staying off the job, but not try to block their access.
"We're here to support the longshore union workers," said Toby Blome of El Cerrito who was carrying a large peace symbol fashioned from a hula hoop and covered in artificial flowers. "This is a very courageous effort they're doing."
Operations in Oakland and other West Coast ports ground to a halt Thursday after ILWU workers stayed off the job, said Steve Getzug, spokesman for the Pacific Maritime Association, which represents companies that move cargo through the ports.
"There is no activity," he said. "The ILWU struck West Coast ports and brought cargo operations to a virtual standstill."
In San Francisco, marchers were urged on by a spirited brass band and led by the ILWU drill team, wearing taps on their shoes and carrying grappling hooks in their hands. At Justin Herman Plaza, Clarence Thomas, an ILWU spokesman, praised the protesters for walking off the job and called on others to join them.
"Could you imagine if this were being duplicated in more places in all the major sectors of the economy?" he said. "It would send a message that we want this war to end. It's killing our children and diverting resources from domestic needs."
At San Francisco State University, hundreds of students walked out of classes at noon to protest fee hikes - then ended up blocking traffic on busy 19th Avenue in front of the campus for about half an hour, said campus spokeswoman Ellen Griffin.
The march from Dolores Park to the Civic Center drew an energetic and youthful crowd of hundreds of people, who walked to chanting and drumming. Two dozen teenagers led the march, carrying a banner that depicted flags of all the nations of the Americas - from Canada to Chile. Marchers were accompanied by a mixture of bouncy Mexican corridos and sing-song chants in English, including "We are people, we are not illegal."
Across the bay, hundreds of immigrants and supporters flooded the Fruitvale BART station for a march to Oakland City Hall for a rally. The rally featured Aztec dancers, singers and speeches demanding better rights for immigrants.
"All we want to do is work and put food on the table," said Jamilent Canaca, a mother of two from Hayward who works in construction, through a translator. "But it's very difficult to find employment and support your family. We still have to struggle, like we're still in a Third World country."
IN BUSINESS
-- Dockworkers on the West Coast brought port operations to a halt for eight hours in a war protest on May Day. C1
Chronicle Staff Writer Michael Cabanatuan contributed to this report. E-mail the writers at thendricks@sfchronicle.com, carolynjones@sfchronicle.com and cburress@sfchronicle.com
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4) Western ports return to normal after workers' war protest
By ALEX VEIGA, AP Business Writer
Friday, May 2, 2008
(05-02) 04:02 PDT LOS ANGELES, (AP) --
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2008/04/30/financial/f155200D55.DTL
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2008/04/30/financial/f155200D55.DTL&hw=immigrant+rights+may+day&sn=004&sc=553
West Coast cargo traffic came to a halt Thursday as port workers ditched the day shift, saying they wanted to commemorate May Day and call on the U.S. to end the war in Iraq.
Worker stayed off the job for about 10 hours before returning for evening shifts.
Thousands of dockworkers at 29 ports in California, Oregon and Washington were no-shows for the morning shift, leaving ships and trucks idle at ports from Long Beach to Seattle, said Pacific Maritime Association spokesman Steve Getzug.
Some longshore workers in San Francisco and Seattle joined rallies with other anti-war protesters. But no longshore workers could be found protesting at the giant Long Beach-Los Angeles port complex.
The work stoppage came during ongoing contract talks between the union and shippers that began in March. The current six-year contract expires on July 1.
The union insisted the walkout was not related to the negotiations and defended its members' right to take the day off.
"We're loyal to America, and we won't stand by while our country, our troops, and our economy are destroyed by a war," said Bob McEllrath, the ILWU's international president.
The West Coast ports are the nation's principal gateway for cargo container traffic from the Far East, with the adjacent ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach handling about 40 percent of the nation's cargo.
J. Craig Shearman, a spokesman for the National Retail Federation, said shippers and exporters expected no long-term disruptions from the walkout.
"This is something that happens every year," he said.
Shearman said many longshore workers on the West Coast took May Day off last year to participate in immigration rallies.
"Everything is back to normal. Assignments are being dispatched," Craig Merrilees, a spokesman for the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, said Thursday evening.
Longshore workers handle everything from operating cranes at port marine terminals to clerical work like coordinating truck cargo deliveries.
Due to the walkout, trucker James Laudermill, 48, spent the morning washing his truck and fueling up on diesel at a truck wash in the Los Angeles suburb of Wilmington after he was turned away at the nearby Port of Long Beach.
"I was trying to pick up a load this morning, and I was at the speaker and suddenly security came out and run us all out," he said, adding he would lose about $400 because of the walkout.
In the current contract talks, port employers are seeking productivity increases through shift adjustments and technology upgrades.
The union wants better safety standards and increased compensation.
Shippers have said the average full-time dockworker made $136,000 in 2007. The union disputes that figure, stressing that only 10,000 of the 25,000 workers covered by the current contract worked full-time or more hours.
Getzug said employers were concerned about the impact of the walkout on contract talks. He did not elaborate.
A 10-day lockout during a 2002 contract dispute cost the nation's economy an estimated $1 billion to $2 billion a day.
Union members voted during a caucus in February to take May 1 off to protest the war. Employers raised objections with an arbitrator, who ruled in favor of the employers and ordered the union to tell members to show up for work.
The union said it complied with its contract.
Associated Press Writers Gillian Flaccus in Long Beach, Marcus Wohlsen in San Francisco and Manuel Valdes in Seattle contributed to this report.
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5) Notes From the War on Terror
Editorial
May 2, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/02/opinion/02fri1.html?hp
For more than a year, President Bush has refused to honor legitimate requests from the Democratic majority in Congress for legal documents that he used to justify ordering the abuse, humiliation and torture of prisoners. This week, the Justice Department finally agreed to show some papers to members of the House and Senate.
Sounds like good news? Not so much.
For starters, it is not yet clear whether the White House will turn over the complete and unredacted opinions of the government lawyers that claimed the president could ignore the law and the Geneva Conventions.
Even if the documents are not censored, the Bush administration has agreed to give them only to the House and Senate Intelligence Committees. It is withholding them from the Senate Judiciary Committee, which has supervisory power over the Justice Department and is charged with assessing the legality of government policies.
Finally, Mr. Bush continues to use a bogus claim of secrecy to keep the documents on torture from those who most need and deserve to see them — the public.
As appalling as this stonewalling is, it is not the only disturbing news from the war on terror.
On Sunday, Mark Mazzetti reported in The Times that the Justice Department still claims that intelligence agents can legally use interrogation methods prohibited under American and international law.
In 2006, after Congress put restrictions on the military’s interrogation methods, Mr. Bush formally exempted the Central Intelligence Agency. He issued secret rules that are believed to allow harsh and abusive methods, some of which amount to torture by pretty much any definition except this administration’s.
In a letter to Congress in March, the Justice Department argues that the administration does not have to follow the Geneva Conventions’ prohibition against “outrages upon personal dignity.” The letter added that it is acceptable to abuse or humiliate a prisoner if it is being done to uncover a terrorist plot. Nothing in American law or the Constitution justifies that sort of ends-justify-the-means approach.
Finally, after years of Supreme Court rulings and legislation that made it clear that Mr. Bush is not above the law, the president continues to run an outlaw system of courts in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. Their role is not to deliver any recognizable form of justice but rather to lock up for life without appeal anyone Mr. Bush decides to call an “illegal enemy combatant.”
The former chief of prosecutors at Guantánamo, Col. Morris D. Davis, testified recently that superiors at the Pentagon decreed there would be “no acquittals” of prisoners tried before military tribunals. He said he also was told that the timing of charges against well-known detainees “could have real strategic political value.”
There is some good news: Senator Jay Rockefeller, the Democratic chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, is demanding all documents related to waterboarding, the form of torture that simulates drowning. And his panel voted to restrict the C.I.A. to military rules on interrogation, prohibit private contractors from interrogating detainees and require the C.I.A. to give the Red Cross access to any prisoners it holds anywhere.
We know from experience that if Republicans don’t kill these measures, Mr. Bush will veto them. The next president and Congress will have to work very hard to uncover all the ways Mr. Bush has twisted or evaded the law, and then set things right.
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6) Crowds Are Smaller at Protests by Immigrants
By RANDAL C. ARCHIBOLD
May 2, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/02/us/02march.html?ref=us
LOS ANGELES — Thousands of immigrants and their supporters marched in several cities on Thursday to demand civil rights at a time when crackdowns against illegal immigrants are rising.
The May Day demonstrations were significantly smaller than in previous years, and gone were calls for a nationwide boycott of businesses and work, as protest leaders had urged last year. The Spanish-language D.J.’s who had heavily promoted previous marches stuck largely to their regular programming. And disagreements among advocates over the best approach to winning legal status for illegal immigrants had diminished organizing firepower, with many groups turning their attention to voter registration and citizenship drives.
In many cities, including New York, Chicago, Houston and Los Angeles, crowds were a small fraction of those in previous years, with few people outside protest areas even aware that marches were under way.
Some supporters said they had lost a rallying cry in the stalled effort in Congress to revamp immigration law. At the same time, with the government stepping up border and immigration enforcement, a cloud of fear has settled over immigrants who were worried that the rallies would lead to more sweeps.
Milwaukee had one of the more robust turnouts, with thousands of people gathering, as they did last year. Protesters called on the presidential candidates, each of whom has supported Congressional efforts to allow a way for certain illegal immigrants to gain legal status, to make immigration issues a priority.
“We want a commitment from the three presidential candidates to pass humane immigration reform in the first 100 days in office,” said Christine Neumann-Ortiz, director of Voces de la Frontera, the main organization behind the Milwaukee march.
In Los Angeles, where riot police officers beat and shoved demonstrators and journalists last year, some marchers were concerned about trouble, though across the nation the marches were largely peaceful.
“Today the police didn’t bring their batons,” Jorge Reyes called out in Spanish from a truck in downtown Los Angeles. “Today they came in peace to help us legalize the 12 million immigrants in this country.”
Messages on T-shirts and signs and protest leaders with bullhorns demanded an end to immigration raids that have led to an increasing number of deportations. The United States deported 280,000 people last year, a 44 percent increase over the previous year.
Mayor Antonio R. Villaraigosa of Los Angeles, who has called on the Department of Homeland Security to halt most workplace raids, joined business and labor leaders on Wednesday to announce the results of a study that found the raids harmful to the economy. The study said 50 percent or more of workers in some local industries were in the country illegally, and it projected great harm to the region if businesses closed or moved because of the immigration sweeps.
Supporters of tighter controls on immigration said the rallies had done little but energize their backers. Leaders of NumbersUSA, one of the larger groups advocating a clampdown on illegal immigration, urged its members to call members of Congress and use the rallies to help make their case.
“The marchers say suspend the rule of law and reward illegality,” said Roy Beck, executive director of NumbersUSA, which says its membership has swelled to more than 600,000 from 112,000 three years ago.
“Our callers say what your constituents really want is enforcement,” Mr. Beck added. “We want to take away the jobs magnet and basically create an inhospitable environment for immigration law breakers so more and more will decide to go home or not come.”
Counterdemonstrators appeared at some rallies, including in Boston, where the police had to separate demonstrators who became embroiled in profanity-laced exchanges.
Though meager, the crowds were often festive and melded a variety of causes. A rally in Union Square Park in Manhattan drew several hundred people invoking socialism, police violence and Sept. 11 conspiracy theories, in addition to immigrant rights.
Lisa Melendez, a community-college librarian from Long Island, said she attended the Union Square rally to advocate legalization for her students, many of whom are Mexican or Ecuadorean.
“For young women, it’s especially difficult, because you study so hard to get an engineering degree and then you end up having to baby sit or clean houses,” Ms. Melendez said as she stood by five students who had come with her.
Contributing reporting were Ana Facio Contreras in Los Angeles, C.J. Hughes in New York, J. Miner in Milwaukee and Katie Zezima in Boston.
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7) Union’s War Protest Shuts West Coast Ports
By WILLIAM YARDLEY
May 2, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/02/us/02port.html?ref=us
SEATTLE — West Coast ports were shut down on Thursday as thousands of longshoremen failed to report for work, part of what their union leaders said was a one-day, one-shift protest against the war in Iraq.
Cranes and forklifts stood still from Seattle to San Diego, and ships were stalled at sea as workers held rallies up and down the coast to blame the war for distracting public attention and money from domestic needs like health care and education.
“We’re loyal to America, and we won’t stand by while our country, our troops and our economy are being destroyed by a war that’s bankrupting us to the tune of $3 trillion,” the president of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, Bob McEllrath, said in a written statement. “It’s time to stand up, and we’re doing our part today.”
About 25,000 union members are employed at 29 West Coast ports, but the protest took place only during the day shift. A spokesman for the main West Coast employers’ group, the Pacific Maritime Association, said it appeared that about 6,000 workers did not show up for work, which meant that about 10,000 containers would not be loaded or unloaded from about 30 cargo ships.
The spokesman, Steve Getzug, cast the action as a strike and therefore a violation of the union’s labor contract, which is up for renewal this summer.
“What the union says and what the union does are two different things,” Mr. Getzug said. “This is genuine defiance.”
Union leaders said that the association had rejected their request weeks ago for Thursday’s one-shift work stoppage, but that local longshoremen continued to promote the protest. It went forward, the union leaders said, despite a demand on Wednesday by an independent arbitrator that they instruct members to go to work.
In many cases, dock workers were joined at port entrances or at rallies by other groups protesting the war or frustrated by economic issues or immigration policies. Some rallies seemed as much like street fairs as angry acts of resistance, with booksellers setting up stands and supporters of the presidential candidate Ralph Nader carrying banners.
On the Seattle waterfront, members of the United Auto Workers and the Service Employees International Union mixed with self-described socialists while many of the scores of police officers on the scene ate box lunches and petted their horses.
In Oakland, Calif., some truckers who said they were angry about high gas prices decided not to cross picket lines at the port.
“I got here ready to haul,” said César Lara, 41, a resident of Richmond, Calif., born in Zacatecas, Mexico. “They told me it was a picket but if I wanted to go in I could. But I’m supporting them and to end the war.”
Several drivers said truckers were planning their own nationwide work stoppage in the next several days to protest record-high gas prices and surcharges.
In Long Beach, Calif., part of nation’s largest port complex, truck drivers from California and neighboring states waited for the port security gates to reopen on Thursday evening, when union members said they planned to return to work. Nearby, in Wilmington, longshoremen met inside a hall while some union members outside read pink fliers stating the reasons for work stoppage.
Kevin Schroeder, director of Local 13’s political action committee, said, “The children of middle-class people are over there dying, so we decided to do something. We are fortunate enough to be in an organization that has a platform to do something.”
Rebecca Cathcart contributed reporting from Long Beach, Calif., and Carolyn Marshall from Oakland, Calif.
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8) Oakland Teach-In Looks at Budget Cuts and the War
By JESSE McKINLEY
May 2, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/02/us/02oakland.html?ref=us
OAKLAND, Calif. — Third period at Paul Robeson High School in East Oakland was pretty much what you might expect on a sunny Thursday afternoon at the end of the term: distracted students, talk of graduation and nearly silent response to teachers’ questions.
Until, of course, the topic turned to the recent cuts in the state’s education budget.
“We don’t have any money because it’s all going to the war,” said Ashley Lawless, a 18-year-old senior who moments before had been obsessively fixing her hair. “And now they’re shutting all this stuff down.”
That kind of angry outburst may have been precisely the point of a daylong act of educational disobedience undertaken on Thursday by about two dozen teachers across Oakland, who set aside their normal lesson plans in favor of topics like the war in Iraq, racial inequality and a recent 10 percent cut in the state schools budget.
Craig Gordon, a social studies teacher at Robeson and the author of the day’s curriculum, said the goal was to raise awareness among students who may not have a firm grasp of the relationship between what happens at home and what happens “out there.”
“I wanted them to actively think about the priorities of society, because they are the ones who are going to be most affected,” Mr. Gordon said. “They are the ones that need to be informed so they can make a decision on whether they want to do something about it.”
The so-called teach-in was just one of a series of May Day events in California, including a work stoppage at several ports and large pro-immigrant demonstrations. Mr. Gordon’s classes were about a third empty because of a walkout by Latino students, some of whom chanted for immigrant rights outside the school’s fences.
For those in school, however, the topics being bandied about were far juicier than the average civics class. Teachers from elementary school to adult education classes allowed students to discuss everything from whether the United States was committing acts of violence against innocent people to whether American businesses were getting rich on the backs of the poor.
One worksheet handed out to students was blunt in its assessment of the current events: “About 1,000,000 Iraqis are dead and 4,000 American soldiers. The war will cost the U.S. about $2.8 trillion. Our schools don’t have money. Many people don’t have health care.”
And while district officials did not officially sanction Thursday’s change in curriculum, they did not seem to mind, either.
“We recognize that a comprehensive education needs to consider the subjects that are taught in relation to current events,” said Troy Flint, a district spokesman. “And today’s lessons exemplify that.”
School districts across the state have voiced their displeasure with the cuts in financing, which come as California faces a $14.5 billion deficit. But perhaps nowhere have the objections been more pronounced than in Oakland, a historically underfinanced district of some 39,000 students, many of them poor. The district essentially went bankrupt in 2003 and was taken over by the state, though it has recently resumed local control over some administrative functions, Mr. Flint said.
On Wednesday, members of the school board and local leaders rallied to protest the recent cuts and unveiled several proposals meant to help generate funds, including closing a loophole on a state yacht tax. More unusual, the district is also praising a plan to ask residents in Democratic-led legislative districts to “call, e-mail, and/or send a postcard” to residents in Republican districts to try to drum up support for increased taxes on oil, vehicles and the wealthy.
“People just seem to tune out, because every year there seems to be a budget crisis,” said Kerry Hamill, a board member who organized the rally on Wednesday. “We wanted people to know that this one is different.”
The question of whether such nonviolent means really work also had students debating in a rickety modular classroom at Oakland High School during Thursday’s teaching of the alternate curriculum.
Taurus Hamilton, a junior, said he was not sure.
“Sometimes you need some violence to show people that you got something to say,” Mr. Hamilton said. “Sometimes you got to show people what you’re willing to do to get what you need.”
A classmate, Vanessa Dilworth, disagreed. “That’s not right,” she said. “If you don’t do it a peaceful way, there’s people that are going to beat you down. It’s like Martin Luther King versus Malcolm X.”
Their teacher, Ben Visnick, came down firmly on the side of nonviolence, but let the students battle it out verbally for several minutes. A former president of the teachers’ union, which helped organize Thursday’s curriculum shift, Mr. Visnick said earlier classes had sparred over the economy and the school system’s budget, which is never far from some students’ minds.
“Most of our students are working class or poor,” Mr. Visnick said. “And they know that the deck is not always stacked fairly.”
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9) Cameraman Is Released From Guantánamo
By WILLIAM GLABERSON
May 2, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/02/us/nationalspecial3/02gitmo.html?ref=us
A former cameraman for Al Jazeera who was believed to be the only journalist held at Guantánamo Bay was released on Thursday, after more than six years of detention that made him one of the best known Guantánamo detainees in the Arab world, his lawyers said.
The detainee, Sami al-Hajj, became a cause in recent years for the Jazeera network, which often displayed his photograph and carried reports on his case.
He was also one of Guantánamo’s long-term hunger strikers, and his lawyers at the British legal group Reprieve drew wide attention to what they said was his declining physical and mental health.
“It is yet another case where the U.S. has held someone for years and years and years on the flimsiest of evidence” without filing charges, one of the lawyers, Zachary Katznelson, said Thursday.
Mr. Hajj, 38, was sent with at least two other detainees to his native Sudan on a military aircraft, the lawyers said. The Pentagon declined to comment.
Military officials have insisted that Mr. Hajj was courier of terrorism money and said all detainees were treated humanely at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.
The case did not draw the attention among American journalists that some of them said it deserved, in part because Mr. Hajj’s full life story was not known. As with most Guantánamo detainees, the Pentagon’s evidence against him was largely secret.
“I would have rather seen more of an outcry,” said Joel Simon, executive director of the Committee to Protect Journalists, which tried to call attention Mr. Hajj’s detention.
Mr. Simon said the case was part of what he called a disturbing trend of the American military to hold journalists for long periods without charges before eventually releasing them. He said his group had documented 11 such cases since 2001.
The releases on Thursday were part of a Bush administration effort to reduce the numbers of detainees at Guantánamo, which is now believed to hold about 270 of them.
Pentagon officials say many released detainees remain a terrorism threat and insist that countries that receive them take steps to monitor them or take other steps to reduce their risk.
But Mr. Katznelson said he did not expect that Mr. Hajj would be charged by Sudan.
Mr. Katznelson said Mr. Hajj had been “almost overwhelmed” at the prospect of seeing his 7-year-old son, who was an infant when he left home. But he said the former detainee’s health was so fragile that he would immediately go to a hospital after his military plane touched down in Khartoum.
The Pentagon several times changed its assertions about Mr. Hajj. But military officials have insisted recently that he carried money intended for Chechen rebels.
He had been an Al Jazeera employee for only a short time when he was captured in 2001 by Pakistani forces at the Afghan border. He was later turned over to American forces and, in 2002, sent to Guantánamo.
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10) State Officials Predict a Deep Recession
By NICHOLAS CONFESSORE
May 2, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/02/nyregion/02albany.html?ref=nyregion
ALBANY — State budget officials said on Thursday that New York’s economy was slipping into a recession that could last through early next year and prove worse than the recession looming before the country as a whole.
Laura L. Anglin, the budget director for Gov. David A. Paterson, said that key economic indicators, like falling corporate profits and four consecutive months of job losses nationally, had convinced state budget analysts that the United States was already in a recession, and that New York was soon to follow.
“New York tends to lag the nation,” Ms. Anglin said. “That’s why we worry that the worst is yet to come.”
Historically, recessions in New York, compared with those in the nation as a whole, have lasted twice as long and inflicted deeper job losses, according to state budget officials.
Job growth in the state is expected merely to stagnate next year. The downturn appears far worse nationally than previously projected, with more than $200 billion in write-offs so far through April at major financial firms and 63,000 layoffs in the financial and insurance sectors. On Wall Street, which supplies one-fifth of the state’s tax revenue, bonuses are now expected to be down 11 percent this fiscal year, after a small decline last year and a 25 percent increase the year before.
Those forecasts were paired with sharply more pessimistic tax revenue forecasts for the coming years, which Ms. Anglin — echoing Mr. Paterson’s recent calls for more budget cuts — said would require drastic reductions in state spending. Over the past nine months, the state has revised its projections for this year downward by $1.7 billion.
“The typical New Yorker is tightening their belts,” Ms. Anglin said. “They’re feeling the crunch of higher prices; they’re having to manage their resources better. I think that the typical New Yorkers should know that we’re aware of that and that the state needs to do the same thing.”
The budget gap for the next fiscal year is projected at $5 billion. It is expected to increase to $7.7 billion in the 2010 fiscal year and $8.8 billion in the 2011 fiscal year, according to the budget office, approaching levels not seen since the recession that followed the 9/11 attack, which all but put Lower Manhattan out of business for months.
Without the budget cuts already planned for next year, Ms. Anglin said, spending would increase by 10.2 percent over this year compared with revenue increases of only 2.7 percent, a level she described as “not sustainable.” Because of steadily increasing state spending, Ms. Anglin said, even a quick economic recovery would not necessarily ameliorate future budget gaps.
Mr. Paterson sought and won hundreds of millions of dollars in additional cuts from his commissioners and agency heads soon after succeeding Gov. Eliot Spitzer in March. And last week, he suggested that he wanted the Legislature to take the unusual step of reopening the budget to seek more cuts for next year and after.
The just-approved budget increased spending by 4.8 percent over all for the current fiscal year, with significant increases in school aid, upstate economic development and capital improvements to the state university system. Medicaid continues to be a major state expense.
Not since former Gov. George E. Pataki’s first term has New York actually cut spending, said Edmund J. McMahon, director of the Manhattan Institute’s Empire Center for New York State Policy, which advocates lower government spending. Mr. Paterson, he suggested, would need to do the same.
“The budget gaps are clearly spending-driven. And the budget gaps were made worse by the budget they just did,” Mr. McMahon said. “The school-aid spigot is going to have to be turned off. And he’s going to have to fight his own battles on Medicaid.”
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11) Chevron Earnings Up 10% on Record Oil Prices
By REUTERS
May 2, 2008
Filed at 8:52 a.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/business/international-chevron-results.html?ref=business
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Chevron Corp (NYSE:CVX) said Friday its first-quarter earnings rose 10 percent as record oil prices outweighed weak profits from gasoline production.
Net income in the quarter rose to $5.17 billion, or $2.48 a share, from $4.72 billion, or $2.18 a share, last year. Analysts, on average, had expected the company to earn $2.41, according to Reuters Estimates.
Sales and other revenue in the quarter rose 40 percent to $64.67 billion.
Benchmark U.S. oil prices averaged a record of nearly $98 a barrel during the quarter, up nearly 70 percent from a year earlier.
But margins to produce gasoline have plummeted, with refiners struggling to push through higher crude costs to customers. First-quarter gasoline prices rose only 33 percent year over year in the U.S. -- less than half crude's rise.
Profits from the company's exploration and production unit rose 76 percent to $5.13 billion, while earnings from refining and marketing plunged 84 percent to $252 million.
Chevron shares closed at $94.94 on the New York Stock Exchange Thursday. They are up nearly 2 percent this year, slightly outperforming the Chicago Board Options Exchange's oil index, which is basically flat over the same period.
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12) After Hiatus, States Set Wave of Executions
By RALPH BLUMENTHAL
May 3, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/03/us/03execute.html?ref=us
HUNTSVILLE, Tex. — Here in the nation’s leading death-penalty state, and some of the 35 others with capital punishment, execution dockets are quickly filling up.
Less than three weeks after a United States Supreme Court ruling ended a seven-month moratorium on lethal injections, at least 14 execution dates have been set in six states between May 6 and October.
“The Supreme Court essentially blessed their way of doing things,” said Douglas A. Berman, a professor of law and a sentencing expert at Ohio State University. “So in some sense, they’re back from vacation and ready to go to work.”
Experts say the resumption of executions is likely to throw a strong new spotlight on the divisive national — and international — issue of capital punishment.
“When people confront a new wave of executions, they’ll be questioning not only how people are executed but whether people should be executed,” said James R. Acker, a historian of the death penalty and a criminal justice professor at the State University at Albany.
Texas leads the list with five people now set to die here in the Walls Unit, the state’s death house, between June 3 and Aug. 20. Virginia is next with four. Louisiana, Oklahoma and South Dakota have also set execution dates.
Some welcome the end of the moratorium.
“We’ll start playing a little bit of catch-up,” said William R. Hubbarth, a spokesman for Justice for All, a victims rights group based in Houston.
“It’s not like we have a cheering section for the death penalty.” Mr. Hubbarth said. But, he added: “The capital murderers set to be executed should be executed post-haste. It’s not about killing the inmate. It’s about imposing the penalty that 12 of his peers have assessed.”
More inmates whose appeals have expired are certain to be added to execution rosters soon, including, in all likelihood, Jack Harry Smith, who, at 70, is the oldest of the 360 men and 9 women on Texas’ death row (though hardly a row any more, but an entire compound). Mr. Smith has been under a death sentence for 30 years for a robbery killing at a grocery in the Houston area.
“If it’s my time to go, it’s my time to go,” said Mr. Smith, who maintains his innocence and was delivered by guards for a prison interview in a wheelchair.
So far, at least nine others elsewhere, including Antoinette Frank, a former police officer convicted of a murderous robbery rampage in New Orleans, have been given new execution dates, according to the Death Penalty Information Center, an anti-capital punishment research group that puts the latest death row census at 3,263. Dozens more are likely to get execution dates in coming months, but most under death sentences have not exhausted their appeals.
Yet public support for capital punishment may be dwindling. Death sentences have been on the decline, and a poll last year by death penalty opponents found Americans losing confidence in the death penalty.
“There will be more executions than people have the stomach for, at least in many parts of the country,” said Stephen B. Bright, president of the Southern Center for Human Rights in Atlanta, a leading anti-death-penalty litigation clinic.
Last year, Texas accounted for 26 of the 42 executions nationwide. That includes the last two people executed before the Supreme Court signaled a moratorium on executions while considering whether the chemical formula used for lethal injection in Kentucky inflicted pain amounting to unconstitutionally cruel and unusual punishment. The justices ruled 7 to 2 on April 16 that it did not, while allowing for possible future challenges.
But the scheduling of executions comes as prosecutors and juries have been turning away from the death penalty, often in favor of life sentences without parole, now an option in every death-penalty state but New Mexico.
According to the Death Penalty Information Center, death sentences nationwide rose from 137 in 1977, peaked at 326 in 1995 and fell steadily to 110 last year.
“We’re seeing a huge drop-off,” said Mr. Bright, attributing the decline to the time and trouble of imposing death sentences, and a recent wave of exonerations after DNA tests proved wrongful conviction.
Close to 35 people have been cleared in Texas alone, including, just days ago, James L. Woodard, who spent more than 27 years in prison for a 1980 murder he did not commit.
The first inmate now set for execution is William E. Lynd, 53, on Tuesday in Georgia. Mr. Lind was convicted of shooting his girlfriend, Ginger Moore, in the face during an argument in 1988, shooting her again as she clung to life, and a third time, fatally, as she struggled in the trunk of his car. After burying her, he attacked and killed another woman he had stopped on the road.
With two other executions pending but not yet scheduled in Georgia, the state seeks “clearance of the backlog,” said Russ Willard, a spokesman for Attorney General Thurbert E. Baker. “We will work our way though the system at a much more rapid pace than we would have.”
Virginia — which has executed 98 people since 1976, second only to Texas, with 405 — has the next scheduled execution: May 27, for Kevin Green, 30, for the 1998 slayings of Patricia and Lawrence Vaughn in their convenience store in Dolphin. Three other Virginia inmates also have been given dates in June and July.
Louisiana has set a July 15 execution date for two inmates, including the former police officer, Ms. Frank, 30. She was convicted of killing a fellow officer, Ronald Williams, and two Vietnamese workers, Ha Vu and her brother, Cuong Vong, at their family’s restaurant in New Orleans during a robbery in 1995.
But appeals may delay her execution and that of the second inmate Darrell Robinson, convicted of killing four people.
South Dakota, which has recorded only 15 executions since 1889, set a week’s window of Oct. 7-13 for the execution of Briley Piper, 25. He pleaded guilty to the torture murder of Chester Allan Pogue, 19, who was forced to drink hydrochloric acid and then stabbed and bludgeoned to death in 2000. One accomplice was executed last year and another is serving life without parole.
The first Texas inmate now re-scheduled for death, on June 3, is Derrick Sonnier, 40, convicted of stalking, stabbing and strangling a young mother, Melody Flowers, and her baby son in Humble, north of Houston, in 1991.
Mr. Sonnier, who turned down a request this week for an interview, had forbidden his trial lawyer from calling family members as mitigating witnesses, costing him a chance for life in prison without parole, said his appellate lawyer, Jani Maselli.
In another of the five latest scheduled Texas executions, a July 22 date was set for Lester Bower, 60, convicted of killing a former police officer and three other men near Sherman in 1983.
Mr. Smith, the oldest death row inmate, lost his Supreme Court appeal in February and said he was resigned to an execution date soon as well.
“I’d hate to go before my time,” he said, a gaunt figure seated in a wheelchair and speaking by phone behind glass in the Polunsky Unit in Livingston, Tex., where the condemned are housed until the day they are driven to Huntsville to die.
Asked if the prospect of an end to his confinement came as any relief, he said, “In a way it does.”
“Death is death,” Mr. Smith said. “If they stick a needle in your arm or shoot you in the head, it’s cruel and inhuman punishment, taking a human life.”
Yet, he said, “a life sentence is a whole lot worse — it’s torture.”
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13) Convention Preparations Prompt Suit by A.C.L.U.
By KIRK JOHNSON
May 3, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/03/us/03denver.html?ref=us
DENVER — Groups planning parades or protests at the Democratic National Convention filed a lawsuit here on Friday charging that the Secret Service and the City of Denver are threatening free speech — not because of tight security rules, but by the very lack of them.
The suit, filed in Federal District Court, says that delays in establishing legal parade routes, and unanswered questions about security arrangements around the convention center, are undermining efforts to plan for events when Democrats gather here from Aug. 25 to 28.
Mark Silverstein, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Colorado, which is representing 12 groups in the lawsuit, said they had no choice but to turn to the court. With just four months until the convention, the groups want a judge to speed the scheduling and the issuing of rules governing activities outside the Pepsi Center.
At the Democratic convention in Boston in 2004, First Amendment challenges could not be addressed by judges, Mr. Silverstein said, because security measures were announced too late.
“In Boston, the trial court and the court of appeals said there was not enough time for full evaluation and not enough time to carry out any orders the courts might issue,” Mr. Silverstein said. “For that reason, we are filing now and asking the court to place this case on a top-priority schedule.”
Specifically, the suit asks the court to order the Secret Service to immediately provide information to the city that will allow Denver officials to begin considering permit requests for parades and specifying a “demonstration zone” near the convention center. The suit also asks the court to review those regulations for violations of free speech protection.
A spokesman for the Secret Service, Ed Donovan, declined to comment on the suit or the agency’s timetable for communicating with the city on security rules.
The attorney for the City of Denver, David Fine, said in a statement that the city was not trying to thwart free speech.
“No one has been denied the right to protest,” Mr. Fine said. “In fact, you will see a vigorous exercise of free speech during the convention in many ways and in many places. That being said, we will review the plaintiffs’ papers and respond as necessary.”
The groups suing include several that plan to draw attention to various issues and causes, like the Troops Out Now Coalition, which opposes the war in Iraq. Another group, Citizens for Obama, wants to march on behalf of a favored presidential candidate, Senator Barack Obama of Illinois.
One member of the lawsuit coalition, Glenn Spagnuolo, from a group called Recreate 68, which is planning multiple demonstrations on issues including health care and the war, said at a news conference that he thought the delays had been deliberate.
Every passing week of uncertainty, Mr. Spagnuolo said, hobbles the efforts to recruit people to come to Denver and speak their minds.
“If they announce it very close to August that, yes, you will have your permits, these groups are now shut out of hotels, shut out of flights, buses are booked to come to Denver and it’s impossible for them to logistically come here and exercise their First Amendment right,” Mr. Spagnuolo said. “In our opinion, it’s a planned tactic.”
The suit itself does not make that claim.
Mr. Silverstein said, “We have to take the city at its word that it doesn’t have enough information from the Secret Service to process the permits, and that’s why we’re asking the court to get the two parties together.”
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LINKS AND VERY SHORT STORIES
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Halliburton Profit Rises
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
HOUSTON (AP) — Increasing its global presence is paying off for the oil field services provider Halliburton, whose first-quarter income rose nearly 6 percent on growing business in the Middle East, Asia and Latin America, the company said Monday.
Business in the first three months of 2008 also was better than expected in North America, where higher costs and lower pricing squeezed results at the end of 2007.
Halliburton shares closed up 3 cents, at $47.46, on the New York Stock Exchange.
Halliburton said it earned $584 million, or 64 cents a share, in the three months that ended March 31, compared with a year-earlier profit of $552 million, or 54 cents a share. Revenue rose to $4.03 billion, from $3.42 billion a year earlier.
April 22, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/22/business/worldbusiness/22halliburton.html?ref=business
Illegal Immigrants Who Were Arrested at Poultry Plant in Arkansas to Be Deported
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Eighteen illegal immigrants arrested at a poultry plant in Batesville will be processed for deportation, but will not serve any jail time for using fake Social Security numbers and state identification cards, federal judges ruled. Magistrate Judge Beth Deere and Judge James Moody of Federal District Court accepted guilty pleas from 17 of those arrested last week at the Pilgrim’s Pride plant. Federal prosecutors dismissed the misdemeanor charges against one man, but said they planned to ask Immigration and Customs Enforcement to begin deportation proceedings against him. The guilty pleas will give the 17 people criminal records, which will allow prosecutors to pursue tougher penalties if they illegally return to the United States. They had faced up to up to two years in prison and $205,000 in fines. Jane Duke, a United States attorney, said her office had no interest in seeing those arrested serve jail time, as they were “otherwise law-abiding citizens.”
National Briefing | South
April 22, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/22/us/22brfs-002.html?ref=us
Coal Company Verdict in West Virginia Is Thrown Out
By ADAM LIPTAK
April 4, 2008
National Briefing | Mid-Atlantic
The State Supreme Court for a second time threw out a $50 million verdict against the coal company Massey Energy. The court decided to rehear the case after the publication of photographs of its chief justice on vacation in Monte Carlo with the company’s chief executive, Don L. Blankenship. The chief justice, Elliott E. Maynard, and a second justice disqualified themselves from the rehearing and were replaced by appeals court judges, but the vote was again 3-to-2 in favor of Massey. A third justice, Brent D. Benjamin, who was elected to the court with the help of more than $3 million from Mr. Blankenship, refused to recuse himself.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/04/us/04brfs-COALCOMPANYV_BRF.html?ref=us
Utah: Miners’ Families File Lawsuit
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
National Briefing | Rockies
April 3, 2008
A lawsuit by the families of six men killed in August in a mine cave-in claims the collapse occurred because the mine’s owners were harvesting coal unsafely. The suit, filed in Salt Lake City, says the Murray Energy Corporation performed risky retreat mining last summer. It seeks unspecified damages. Three men trying to reach the miners died 10 days after the collapse in another cave-in at the Crandall Canyon Mine.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/03/us/03brfs-MINERSFAMILI_BRF.html?ref=us
Regimens: Drug Samples Found to Affect Spending
By NICHOLAS BAKALAR
Vital Signs
Having doctors distribute free samples of medicines may do exactly what drug companies hope for — encourage patients to spend more money on drugs.
A study in the April issue of Medical Care found that patients who never received free samples spent an average of $178 for six months of prescriptions. Those receiving samples spent $166 in the six months before they obtained free medicine, $244 when they received the handouts and $212 in the six months after that.
Researchers studied 5,709 patients, tracking medical histories and drug expenditures; 14 percent of the group received free samples. The study adjusted for prior and current health conditions, race, socioeconomic level and other variables.
The authors acknowledge that the study results could be partly explained by unmeasured illness in the group given samples.
The lead author, Dr. G. Caleb Alexander, an assistant professor of medicine at the University of Chicago, said although free samples might save some patients money, there were other ways to economize. “Using more generics, prescribing for three months’ supply rather than one month’s and stopping drugs that may no longer be needed can also save money,” Dr. Alexander said.
April 1, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/01/health/policy/01regi.html?ref=health
Rhode Island: Order to Combat Illegal Immigration
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
National Briefing | New England
Linking the presence of undocumented workers to the state’s financial woes, Gov. Donald L. Carcieri signed an executive order that includes steps to combat illegal immigration. The order requires state agencies and companies that do business with the state to verify the legal status of employees. It also directs the state police and prison and parole officials to work harder to find and deport illegal immigrants. The governor, a Republican, said that he understood illegal immigrants faced hardships, but that he did not want them in Rhode Island. Under his order, the state police will enter an agreement with federal immigration authorities permitting them access to specialized immigration databases.
March 29, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/29/us/29brfs-002.html?ref=us
North Carolina: Ministers Say Police Destroyed Records
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
National Briefing | South
Three ministers accused a Greensboro police officer of ordering officers to destroy about 50 boxes of police files related to the fatal shooting of five people at an anti-Ku Klux Klan rally in 1979. The Revs. Cardes Brown, Gregory Headen and Nelson Johnson said an active-duty officer told them he and at least three other officers were told to destroy the records in 2004 or 2005, shortly after a seven-member panel that had been convened to research the shootings requested police files related to them. The ministers did not identify the officer who provided the information. On Nov. 3, 1979, a heavily armed caravan of Klansman and Nazi Party members confronted the rally. Five marchers were killed and 10 were injured. Those charged were later acquitted in state and federal trials. The city and some Klan members were found liable for the deaths in civil litigation.
February 27, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/27/us/27brfs-MINISTERSSAY_BRF.html?ref=us
Gaza: Israeli Army Clears Itself in 21 Deaths
By ISABEL KERSHNER
World Briefing | Middle East
The army said no legal action would be taken against military officials over an artillery strike in Beit Hanun in 2006 in which an errant shell hit residential buildings and killed 21 Palestinian civilians. An army investigation concluded that the shell was fired based on information that militants were intending to fire rockets from the area, an army statement said. The civilian deaths, it said, were “directly due to a rare and severe failure” in the artillery control system. The army’s military advocate general concluded that there was no need for further investigation.
February 27, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/27/world/middleeast/27briefs-israelistrike.html?ref=world
World Briefing | Asia
Taiwan: Tons of Fish Wash Up on Beaches
By REUTERS
About 45 tons of fish have washed up dead along 200 miles of beach on the outlying Penghu Islands after an unusual cold snap. News reports said 10 times as many dead fish were still in the water.
February 23, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/23/world/asia/23briefs-TONSOFFISHWA_BRF.html?ref=world
Zimbabwe: Inflation Breaks the Six-Figure Mark
By AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
World Briefing | Africa
The government’s statistics office said the inflation rate surged to a new record of 100,580 percent in January, up from 66,212 percent in December. Rangarirai Mberi, news editor of the independent Financial Gazette in Harare, said the state of the economy would feature prominently in next month’s presidential and parliamentary elections. “Numbers no longer shock people,” he said. Zimbabweans have learned to live in a hyperinflationary environment, he added, “but the question is, how long can this continue?”
February 21, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/21/world/africa/21briefs-INFLATIONBRE_BRF.html?ref=world
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GENERAL ANNOUNCEMENTS AND INFORMATION
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Russell Means Speaking at the Transform Columbus Day Rally
"If voting could do anything it would be illegal!"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_8Lri1-6aoY
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Stop the Termination or the Cherokee Nation
http://groups.msn.com/BayAreaIndianCalendar/activismissues.msnw?action=get_message&mview=1&ID_Message=5580
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We Didn't Start the Fire
http://yeli.us/Flash/Fire.html
I Can't Take it No More
http://lefti.blogspot.com/2007_11_01_archive.html#9214483115237950361
The Art of Mental Warfare
http://artofmentalwarfare.com/pog/artofmentalwarfarecom-the-warning/
MONEY AS DEBT
http://video. google.com/ videoplay? docid=-905047436 2583451279
http://www.moneyasd ebt.net/
UNCONSTITUTIONAL
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6582099850410121223&pr=goog-sl
IRAQ FOR SALE
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6621486727392146155
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Port of Olympia Anti-Militarization Action Nov. 2007
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SOkn2Fg7R8w
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"They have a new gimmick every year. They're going to take one of their boys, black boys, and put him in the cabinet so he can walk around Washington with a cigar. Fire on one end and fool on the other end. And because his immediate personal problem will have been solved he will be the one to tell our people: 'Look how much progress we're making. I'm in Washington, D.C., I can have tea in the White House. I'm your spokesman, I'm your leader.' While our people are still living in Harlem in the slums. Still receiving the worst form of education.
"But how many sitting here right now feel that they could [laughs] truly identify with a struggle that was designed to eliminate the basic causes that create the conditions that exist? Not very many. They can jive, but when it comes to identifying yourself with a struggle that is not endorsed by the power structure, that is not acceptable, that the ground rules are not laid down by the society in which you live, in which you are struggling against, you can't identify with that, you step back.
"It's easy to become a satellite today without even realizing it. This country can seduce God. Yes, it has that seductive power of economic dollarism. You can cut out colonialism, imperialism and all other kind of ism, but it's hard for you to cut that dollarism. When they drop those dollars on you, you'll fold though."
—MALCOLM X, 1965
http://www.accuracy.org/newsrelease.php?articleId=987
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A little gem:
Michael Moore Faces Off With Stephen Colbert [VIDEO]
http://www.alternet.org/blogs/video/57492/
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LAPD vs. Immigrants (Video)
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/qws/ff/qr?term=lapd&Submit=S&Go.x=0&Go.y=0&Go=Search&st=s
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Dr. Julia Hare at the SOBA 2007
http://mysite.verizon.net/vzeo9ewi/proudtobeblack2/
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"We are far from that stage today in our era of the absolute
lie; the complete and totalitarian lie, spread by the
monopolies of press and radio to imprison social
consciousness." December 1936, "In 'Socialist' Norway,"
by Leon Trotsky: “Leon Trotsky in Norway” was transcribed
for the Internet by Per I. Matheson [References from
original translation removed]
http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1936/12/nor.htm
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Wealth Inequality Charts
http://www.faireconomy.org/research/wealth_charts.html
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MALCOLM X: Oxford University Debate
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dmzaaf-9aHQ
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"There comes a times when silence is betrayal."
--Martin Luther King
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YouTube clip of Che before the UN in 1964
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CtATT8GXkWg&mode=related&search
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The Wealthiest Americans Ever
NYT Interactive chart
JULY 15, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/ref/business/20070715_GILDED_GRAPHIC.html
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New Orleans After the Flood -- A Photo Gallery
http://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/?article=795
This email was sent to you as a service, by Roland Sheppard.
Visit my website at: http://web.mac.com/rolandgarret
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[For some levity...Hans Groiner plays Monk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=51bsCRv6kI0
...bw]
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Which country should we invade next?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q3g_zqz3VjY
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My Favorite Mutiny, The Coup
http://www.myspace.com/thecoupmusic
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Michael Moore- The Awful Truth
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xeOaTpYl8mE
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Morse v. Frederick Supreme Court arguments
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_LsGoDWC0o
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Free Speech 4 Students Rally - Media Montage
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RfCjfod8yuw
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'My son lived a worthwhile life'
In April 2003, 21-year old Tom Hurndall was shot in the head
in Gaza by an Israeli soldier as he tried to save the lives of three
small children. Nine months later, he died, having never
recovered consciousness. Emine Saner talks to his mother
Jocelyn about her grief, her fight to make the Israeli army
accountable for his death and the book she has written
in his memory.
Monday March 26, 2007
The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,,2042968,00.html
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Introducing...................the Apple iRack
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-KWYYIY4jQ
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"A War Budget Leaves Every Child Behind."
[A T-shirt worn by some teachers at Roosevelt High School
in L.A. as part of their campaign to rid the school of military
recruiters and JROTC--see Article in Full item number 4, below...bw]
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"200 million children in the world sleep in the streets today.
Not one of them is Cuban."
(A sign in Havana)
Venceremos
View sign at bottom of page at:
http://www.cubasolidarity.net/index.html
[Thanks to Norma Harrison for sending this...bw]
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FIGHTBACK! A Collection of Socialist Essays
By Sylvia Weinstein
http://www.walterlippmann.com/sylvia-weinstein-fightback-intro.html
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[The Scab
"After God had finished the rattlesnake, the toad,
and the vampire, he had some awful substance left with
which he made a scab."
"A scab is a two-legged animal with a corkscrew soul,
a water brain, a combination backbone of jelly and glue.
Where others have hearts, he carries a tumor of rotten
principles." "When a scab comes down the street,
men turn their backs and angels weep in heaven, and
the devil shuts the gates of hell to keep him out."
"No man (or woman) has a right to scab so long as there
is a pool of water to drown his carcass in,
or a rope long enough to hang his body with.
Judas was a gentleman compared with a scab.
For betraying his master, he had character enough
to hang himself." A scab has not.
"Esau sold his birthright for a mess of pottage.
Judas sold his Savior for thirty pieces of silver.
Benedict Arnold sold his country for a promise of
a commision in the british army."
The scab sells his birthright, country, his wife,
his children and his fellowmen for an unfulfilled
promise from his employer.
Esau was a traitor to himself; Judas was a traitor
to his God; Benedict Arnold was a traitor to his country;
a scab is a traitor to his God, his country,
his family and his class."
Author --- Jack London (1876-1916)...Roland Sheppard
http://web.mac.com/rolandgarret]
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Sand Creek Massacre
"THE SAND CREEK MASSACRE" AWARD-WINNING DOCUMENTARY
SHORT FEATURED AT NATIVE AMERICAN FILM FESTIVAL:
http://www.aberdeennews.com/mld/aberdeennews/news/local/16035305.htm
(scroll down when you get there])
"THE SAND CREEK MASSACRE" AWARD-WINNING
WRITER/FILMMAKER DONALD L. VASICEK REPORT:
http://www.digitalcinemareport.com/sandcreekmassacre.html
"THE SAND CREEK MASSACRE" AWARD-WINNING DOCUMENTARY
SHORT FINALIST IN DOCUMENTARY CHANNEL COMPETITION (VIEW HERE):
http://www.docupyx.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=28&Itemid=41
VIEW "THE SAND CREEK MASSACRE" AWARD-WINNING DOCUMENTARY
SHORT FILM MOVIE OF THE WEEK FOR FREE HERE:
http://twymancreative.com/twymanc.html
On November 29, 1864, 700 Colorado troops savagely slaughtered
over 450 Cheyenne children, disabled, elders, and women in the
southeastern Colorado Territory under its protection. This act
became known as the Sand Creek Massacre. This film project
("The Sand Creek Massacre" documentary film project) is an
examination of an open wound in the souls of the Cheyenne
people as told from their perspective. This project chronicles
that horrific 19th century event and its affect on the 21st century
struggle for respectful coexistence between white and native
plains cultures in the United States of America.
Listed below are links on which you can click to get the latest news,
products, and view, free, "THE SAND CREEK MASSACRE" award-
winning documentary short. In order to create more native
awareness, particularly to save the roots of America's history,
please read the following:
Some people in America are trying to save the world. Bless
them. In the meantime, the roots of America are dying.
What happens to a plant when the roots die? The plant dies
according to my biology teacher in high school. American's
roots are its native people. Many of America's native people
are dying from drug and alcohol abuse, poverty, hunger,
and disease, which was introduced to them by the Caucasian
male. Tribal elders are dying. When they die, their oral
histories go with them. Our native's oral histories are the
essence of the roots of America, what took place before
our ancestors came over to America, what is taking place,
and what will be taking place. It is time we replenish
America's roots with native awareness, else America
continues its decaying, and ultimately, its death.
You can help. The 22-MINUTE SAND CREEK MASSACRE
DOCUMENTARY PRESENTATION/EDUCATIONAL DVD IS
READY FOR PURCHASE! (pass the word about this powerful
educational tool to friends, family, schools, parents, teachers,
and other related people and organizations to contact
me (dvasicek@earthlink.net, 303-903-2103) for information
about how they can purchase the DVD and have me come
to their children's school to show the film and to interact
in a questions and answers discussion about the Sand
Creek Massacre.
Happy Holidays!
Donald L. Vasicek
Olympus Films+, LLC
http://us.imdb.com/Name?Vasicek,+Don
http://www.donvasicek.com
dvasicek@earthlink.net
303-903-2103
"THE SAND CREEK MASSACRE" AWARD-WINNING DOCUMENTARY
SHORT FEATURED AT NATIVE AMERICAN FILM FESTIVAL:
http://www.aberdeennews.com/mld/aberdeennews/news/local/16035305.htm
(scroll down when you get there])
"THE SAND CREEK MASSACRE" AWARD-WINNING
WRITER/FILMMAKER DONALD L. VASICEK REPORT:
http://www.digitalcinemareport.com/sandcreekmassacre.html
"THE SAND CREEK MASSACRE" AWARD-WINNING DOCUMENTARY
SHORT FINALIST IN DOCUMENTARY CHANNEL COMPETITION (VIEW HERE):
http://www.docupyx.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=28&Itemid=41
VIEW "THE SAND CREEK MASSACRE" AWARD-WINNING DOCUMENTARY
SHORT FILM MOVIE OF THE WEEK FOR FREE HERE:
http://twymancreative.com/twymanc.html
SHOP:
http://www.manataka.org/page633.html
BuyIndies.com
donvasicek.com.Peace Articles at Libraryofpeace.org">
